


They don't know about us

by yoonbot (iverins)



Category: GOT7, Miss A
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-11 15:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20548706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iverins/pseuds/yoonbot
Summary: When Jaebum was seventeen and in trouble, he thinks the company told him this: "If you want to be a good idol," and they'd forced this medicine down their throats over and over again, "You have to keep your head down."Sometimes Jaebum wondered what Moses would think now, if he saw idolatry had turned out to be one big business decision.





	They don't know about us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elliebell (Naladot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/gifts).
  * Inspired by [We're yet to bleed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7028014) by [elliebell (Naladot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell). 

> **NOTES:** The universe of this fic is based on the work it was inspired from, the timeline of which is vastly different from canon in real life. This is just fiction and not meant to represent any of the idols being written about! These two songs were very important in the fic-writing process if you'd like to take a listen: [The Wire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikADFrSN_kc) and [Spanish Sahara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prGptG5Ex1g).
> 
> **ADDITIONAL WARNINGS:** Brief mention of drug use. Minor character death.

**SEEN ON SCREEN**

_Academy Award winning actress **Suzy Bae** and international music sensation **Jaebum Im** sit side-by-side on the couch across from an American television host. Projected on the huge monitor behind them is the poster of the Marvel film Suzy's come to promote. The bright green of the background gives them an almost sickly glow over their foundation._

**SUZY:** Korean entertainment is a little like the system of old Hollywood. We sign to a company, and they train us and develop our projects. Jaebum and I basically grew up together. _[She looks at Jaebum encouragingly. After a beat of hesitation, he presses his lips into a smile in return. Suzy has already turned back toward the host.]_

**THE HOST:** Made in the same factory, it sounds like. _[The audience laughs on cue. Suzy flashes a dazzling grin as the camera cuts to her again.]_ Actually, JY Park is a great guy. But the culture shock, it’s got to be tough when you come over here, then.

**SUZY:** Oh, it is. _[She casually places her hand on Jaebum's thigh. Once she'd outgrown the idol roles, Suzy had finally gotten to show the world how great of an actress she'd always been.]_

**JAEBUM:** _[Under his breath, in Korean]_ We grew up with Jinyoung, too. _[He gently moves Suzy's hand away. No one notices.]_

**THE HOST:** What was that, Jaebum? I'm sorry, I don't think the mics picked it up. _[Turns toward the audience]_ These are the first words you've said this entire interview and we wouldn't wanna miss them, would we?

**JAEBUM:** _[He smiles politely as the audience cheers in agreement. He waits for the noise to die down. And then, in English –]_ It was nothing.

**I. I SANG THIS SONG FOR YOU, BECAUSE I WAS SAD AND HAD NOTHING BETTER TO DO**

Suzy looks at him from her reflection in the mirror.

"You should smile more, Jaebum," she says in between reapplying her lipstick. World famous actress, doing her own makeup. It's unheard of. She still uses that same shade she made fly off the shelves.

He stands up, tries to get a different vantage point. "What are you talking about?" Suzy's eyes flicker to follow. It's like she can see right through him – flesh, sinew, bones – down to the embers of hatred in his belly that he keeps swallowing down. They used to burn hot for a lot of things. They've long quelled into an abyss of nothingness, and Suzy stares straight into it now, unflinchingly.

"You've always looked better when you smiled." She uses her pinky to clean up her cupid's bow. Caps her lipstick bullet. "Less vengeful."

Outside in the hallway, the opening notes of his latest single echo. It hit the roof on the charts back home multiple times, and entered the U.S. Top 100 at number 20 immediately. "There's nothing to be vengeful for, is there?" he replies quietly, looking down into his hands.

His voice on the other side of the door croons about losing the only damn thing that ever mattered. Suzy gives him a thin, close-lipped smile in perfect time with the melody. There's a tinge of sadness in her eyes, or it's just a reflection of the vast emptiness Jaebum feels, looking right back into him.

Either way, this is Suzy we’re talking about. She's still beautiful. She wears her sorrow like a brand name coat and twirls as if to say, _See? Looks better on me than you._

“You’re right.” They’re on again in five.

Sometimes, Jaebum has this dream.

He's standing in the middle of what seems to be an apocalyptic Seoul, right in front of a dilapidated version of the newest JYP building. Everything is gray. The wind blows a cloud of dust into his face and makes his eyes water. He coughs. It feels uncannily real, this dream.

Slowly, through the fog, Jaebum feels someone holding his left hand. He turns, waits for the dust to subside, and squints.

Jinyoung stares back at him, completely unfazed by the apparent end of the world. Ridiculously enough, he appears camera-ready, back drawn taut like a bowstring, waiting for someone to call _Action!_ The last time Jaebum saw him on the big screen was in some theater outside of the city. One of Suzy’s movies. He’d seemed larger than life then, like they’d all strived to be.

"Don't look down," dream-Jinyoung tells him.

Jaebum does.

And then he wakes up.

_[He wrote a song about it, once. The dream. This was before the international fame, and it didn't even hit the top 100 on Melon._

_A gift to the fans, they’d called it then. Jaebum donated the proceeds to some relief fund to make himself feel better about the loss he was making the company. He knew Jinyoung would've hated that.]_

A fan uploads the cut of his and Suzy's interview onto Twitter during his plane ride back to Korea, and he watches it over the shitty in-flight wi-fi. Even pixelated, Suzy looks like a world star and Jaebum looks like every sell-out asshole he always promised he'd never turn out to be. In the dark airplane cabin, real Jaebum's reflection becomes superimposed with the blurry on-screen version of himself smiling winningly into the camera. It's some real uncanny valley level shit. He throws up in the airport bathroom once they land.

"Must be the food," he hears his manager say to the new bodyguard from where they're standing by the entrance. Easier to pull the wool over the eyes of. PR manages to intercept every fan-taken picture of Jaebum's landing in Incheon that day.

"You look awful," Sungjin confirms when Jaebum sidles into the seat across from him, an hour late. "I don't remember America being _that_ bad."

There's already an empty beer bottle in front of him. Two empty plates of meat. "I'll pay," Jaebum says, flagging over a waiter to order more. When he licks the roof of his mouth, he still tastes the vomit. "How's the kid?"

"A real menace," Sungjin laughs. There's a softness around his jaw now that hadn't been there the last time they'd seen each other. After their military duty, Day6 had released two more albums, but neither were as successful as their 2019 hit, "To Every Tomorrow." They announced their disbandment once their contracts were up and released one last digital single that would nab the top spot on the charts on and off for weeks. That was five days before the company dropped the first teaser of Jaebum's solo debut. "Dowoon's trying to get him into drumming. Which was cute for a bit but it's also so damn _noisy._"

"What?" Jaebum deadpans. Funny to think about how they'd all started out in the same pool of trainees, starry-eyed – but, at the same time – completely blind. They could've been anyone then. "You afraid he's going to grow up and want to be an idol?" Now, Sungjin's a dad and, last Jaebum heard from Suzy, Brian was dating the leading actress of the drama he'd seen his mom watching when he'd visited his parents a month ago. He assumed Jae was back in America somewhere; no one really knew what Dowoon was up to other than his Instagram posts; and the few times when Jaebum had run into Wonpil at the company building, he wondered if he was still in contact with Jinyoung but never knew how to ask.

Sungjin shakes his head. Sighs. "Let's not talk about this." He reaches for one of the beers the waiter just brought them.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Sungjin scrapes half the plate of raw brisket onto the grill without missing a beat, “That I think you need a friend right now. A friend who isn’t just Suzy.” Through the smoke Sungjin looks at him, earnest and tired. Jaebum always used to hang around him when they were trainees, hoping some of that sincerity would rub off on him from the sheer proximity. “And if we talk about whatever you’re trying to talk about, I feel like we’re never going to want to see each other again.”

Now with only the restaurant table separating them, Jaebum realizes that it never mattered how close or far he’d been from Sungjin. The people they’d grown up to become had nothing in common but their shared past. He bounces a knee as he thinks.

“You mind?” he asks, taking out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket.

Sungjin makes a vague shrugging motion. The brisket sizzles, edges charring. “I’ve got a kid, Jaebum.” The gravity of it all hits him then like a fucking truck.

2019, Hong Kong. Suzy stopped him in the hallway near their hotel rooms with a hand on his elbow.

"Do you want to play in the big leagues?" She shot him her red carpet worthy smile. Everyone saw it on their television screens when they replayed her Academy Award win with the rest of the cast of _Lingua Hanja_ on all the big news stations. She hadn’t spoken to Jaebum in years by that point.

But this much hadn’t changed: Suzy was undeniably beautiful. And Jaebum could never say no to her. This was relatively unsurprising, to the both of them.

He followed her to her hotel room and closed the door.

Here's the truth –

When Jaebum first got into this whole idol schtick over ten years ago, he wanted to go solo. He trained after-hours by himself with an intense, single-minded focus. He imagined headlining a world tour all by himself someday to sold-out venues, waving to a sea of adoring fans who loved his music. Instead, he got straddled with six other guys and was appointed – with all the fanfare of a higher-up stopping by practice for five minutes – leader. He learned to love it eventually, after years of growing pains and growing up.

_[“Becoming successful internationally made me reflect on my debut. It wasn’t that long ago that I was filming my first music video, you know.”]_

Sometime in between JJ Project and their debut as GOT7, Jaebum and Jinyoung had this fight. In fact, they'd fought so often during those years that in the grand scheme of things, this one should've been fairly inconsequential compared to the rest.

"Stop pretending like you –" Jaebum remembers with astonishing clarity that Jinyoung had had this zit on his chin, and it trembled with the rest of his jaw, "Like you actually _care._ You pretend like you're this good guy who's so _earnest_ and it makes me so angry because _you're not!_"

He'd looked at Jaebum defiantly then, breathing hard from raising his voice, eyes gleaming with something Jaebum still can't make out to this day, no matter how many times he's put this memory on repeat. "_I_ would know," he said, softer, before pushing past him and walking away.

The next day, they acted as if nothing happened. For years, it made Jaebum hormonal and hard thinking about Jinyoung forcibly peeling back his skin to see him as all his ugly bone and tissue. His face would twist into that handsome sneer like it had during their argument, and Jaebum would come.

When he finally stood by himself on the world stage, sucking in a breath before he started singing along to his song that everyone seemed to know the words to, Jaebum realized this:

He was impossibly, incorrigibly lonely. And horribly miserable.

An old JJ Project song came on to the wild cheers of fans that had been there since the beginning. He sang all of Jinyoung's lines. His voice was gone for days after.

_[“Sometimes I miss that. I miss having a friend beside me.”]_

Suzy calls him a month after their American TV broadcast to wish him a happy birthday.

"Have you seen anyone recently?" she asks, like their generation of JYP Nation hadn't fallen apart the easiest. Jinyoung was in the middle of ass-fuck nowhere America, probably still hating his guts. Bambam was busy in Thailand, Mark hadn't contacted him since his birthday last year when he'd called a day late ("It's the time zones, man," he'd said in stilted Korean) and told him he should come visit LA whenever, and after Yugyeom's solo debut underperformed and he left the company, he'd been dodgy about his whereabouts in their mostly-abandoned group chat. Youngjae had just started his military service, and the last time Jackson called him three months ago, he'd been drunk and accusing.

"Who even _are_ you anymore?" he yelled over the phone. "We used to be friends, you know? _Brothers._ Now you're like –" and then the call had abruptly been dropped. Jackson called him back the next morning, sober and sorry. Jaebum contemplated telling him the truth in the three minutes before he hung up.

"Sungjin." Was that really already four weeks ago? Four years ago, they'd been recording songs right after new year's and Jinyoung was still his friend. The stark passage of time makes him feel a little numb.

"That's good." Suzy's in Germany, doing some kind of press or photo shoot. Jaebum thinks she told him at the beginning of their conversation but he forgot. "You should go out. Celebrate, have some fun. You haven't done that in a while, have you?"

"Suzy," Jaebum starts, laughing dryly. It was weird, how he always felt compelled to be transparent with her when he could never tell if she had ever been her real self with him. Maybe he thought that if he was honest with her, she would eventually reflect that back to him. He can imagine her perfect face in some luxury hotel room thousands of miles away, but he can’t imagine the expression she’s making right now. "I hate my life."

Silence. Just when Jaebum thinks the call's been disconnected somehow, he hears her take a short breath. "Oh, Jaebum," she finally says with what might be sympathy in her voice. He can't be sure, though, with all the static. "I know."

It's not like Jaebum doesn't want to be a singer anymore, or write music, or hear his songs playing on tiny taxi radios in every country he lands in. It's just that –

"You wouldn't want me to be alone, would you?" he heard Suzy's imagined voice whisper in his ear the day he'd been called in to discuss contract renewal terms. That was half a year after he'd achieved JYP's dream of hitting it big in America. Two weeks after Suzy had gotten married to Choi Jungsik in a beautiful, multi-million dollar ceremony. Two and a half years since the last time Jinyoung accused him of not knowing what was best for the group.

It was funny. Jaebum didn't think Suzy cared about being alone or not. The world spun in her orbit, after all, and he'd always wanted to become an independent artist.

What was even funnier – for some reason, Jaebum thought these things mattered. But, in the face of the game they'd been ensnared into playing, none of them actually did. He signed the damn contract.

Peel back another layer. He ends up on the _Time 100_ for 2021. _Jaebum Im, or more famously known by his stage name JB, made over $70 million last year from his debut album "Faceless" alone. Its lead single, worldwide hit "Stoploss," is still in the top ten of the Top 100 after months of airplay. If that's not enough for you to tune in on Jaebum's next steps, then what is?_ Next to that is the picture they flew him out to New York to take. He’s not smiling in it.

Suzy posted a video of her perfectly-manicured hand flipping through the physical copy that she'd surely been sent in the mail on her Instagram. She was on the page next to his, with a gross income double the value. They both had no idea where any of that money had gone, or where it was going.

Strike the core. When Jaebum was seventeen and in trouble, he thinks the company told him this: "If you want to be a good idol," and they'd forced this medicine down their throats over and over again, "You have to keep your head down."

Sometimes Jaebum wondered what Moses would think now, if he saw idolatry had turned out to be one big business decision.

**II. IF AN IDOL CRIES AND NO ONE IS AROUND TO HEAR IT, DID THEY EVER SHED A TEAR?**

**SEEN ON YOUTUBE CHANNEL "MARKTUAN93"**

_Successful former-idol-turned-YouTuber **Mark Tuan** pans toward the LAX arrivals gate. "Oh, there he is, there he is!" he says behind the camera, in English. Former group member **Jaebum Im** slowly turns the corner into view, pushing a luggage cart. The face mask and beanie don't hide the dark circles under his eyes. Mark hits play on his phone and Jaebum's latest single comes blaring out of portable speakers._

**MARK:** _[Laughing hysterically]_ Oh my god, look at his face! _[Jaebum runs over to him, pushing his hand into the lens. It artfully covers up the small crowd of fans nearby snapping pictures of them.]_ Who knew I'd end up being an Im Jaebum fansite master someday?

**JAEBUM:** _[The camera catches his shoulder as he goes to hug Mark.]_ Shut up.

**MARK:** Dude, how's it like being on top of the world? _[The camera zooms in, searching for the most unflattering angle of Jaebum's face.]_

**JAEBUM:** _[The genuine smile fades. Turns bitter.]_ It's everything I've ever wanted, after all. _[Due to Mark's subpar camera skills, the shot's gone out of focus.]_

Los Angeles, 2022, the first stop of Jaebum's international tour outside of Korea. Mark texted him after rehearsals, sending him a video of the massive line before turning the camera onto front-facing mode and screaming _GOOD LUCK IM JAEBUM!!!_

Some staff members are propping up a flower wreath in his dressing room an hour before the concert. It's taller than all of them. "Who sent that?" he asks.

"Suzy and her husband," his manager replies in between sorting something out with the stage director. "You should send them a thank you."

Jaebum wipes the sweat around his neck as the make-up artist dabs his face with a sponge. "Remind me if I forget," he says, shooting a close-lipped smile at his own reflection. He can’t even convince himself.

Jaebum has met Choi Jungsik a total of three times.

The first was a month after he'd talked to Suzy in Hong Kong. "You wanted to learn more about investing, right?" she asked him over the phone. It felt surreal, them talking to each other again. "I have some friends you can talk to about it."

Jinyoung, who had been standing on the other side of the dressing room, eyed him warily. Jaebum turned away from him. "Sure."

They met in the VIP room of an expensive bar. The lights were dim, and the luxury furniture looked imported, and the alcohol even more expensive than it. They shook hands. Jungsik had a very boyish, charming smile for someone who would eventually ruin Jaebum's life. He guesses that's how all the best antagonists came to be, though – unassuming. Something about the way his eyes curled at the corners reminded him of Jinyoung.

"Don't worry about the bill," he told Jaebum at the end of the night. By then, he and Suzy had to have been dating, but if Jaebum hadn't read the Dispatch article revealing their relationship two years later, he never would've known. "It's on me."

The second was after Jaebum's military service. "I heard you're working on your solo debut," Jungsik mentioned as he lit the cigarette between his lips. The burning end was the brightest thing in the dim room. "What if I told you," he grinned to the darkness before him, "that I could make it a worldwide hit?"

Jaebum leaned forward. He felt himself being siren-called into the sea. "Keep going," he said, tersely. It was like he was seventeen and desperate for his name to be in the lights all over again.

The third was at Suzy's wedding. Suzy looked beautiful in her custom designer dress, her arm looped in Jungsik's.

"Thank you for coming," he said. Jaebum couldn't meet his eyes. Jungsik raised his champagne flute in his direction. "To another successful upcoming year, with your new album."

Jaebum mirrored him. "And to your marriage." His face felt tight, pulled into a smile. A man with so much money couldn't have clean hands, but Suzy didn't flinch when he wrapped one around her waist.

_[And Jaebum doesn't count this, but the fourth was in a nebulous dream. They were at one of those expensive night clubs in Gangnam with the rest of Jungsik's investor friends, sometime in between the wedding and Jaebum completely hating his life._

_The night was glittering and he was drunk out of his mind. He'd just come back through the VIP room after throwing up and someone pressed a pill into his palm. "You'll feel better if you take this," they told him over the thrumming bass. Jaebum accidentally dropped it somewhere._

_The room spun. Jungsik was leaning against the doorway, smoking another cigarette. "You won't tell anyone, will you?" he grinned into the darkness._

_When Jaebum woke up the next morning, he was in his own bed, terribly hungover, sick to his stomach, and unsure of what was real.]_

He calls Suzy after the concert. It's late in LA which means it should be a decent time in Korea, and then Jaebum remembers she's abroad. He can't remember where exactly. She picks up after the second ring, anyway. "Is this for the wreath?" she says in lieu of hello.

Jaebum laughs. "I wish you wouldn't have sent it."

"I didn't want to," Suzy tells him. Jaebum can hear the sad smile in her voice, even thousands of miles away. Truly the actress of her generation. He watched her Marvel movie on his flight over and wanted to believe that she could save the world. "Jungsik insisted."

He looks out his window at the skyline. He used to get angry about these things. Now, he just feels a deep-set exhaustion about it all. "I figured." In the night, the silhouette of a nearby construction crane appears monstrous.

Suzy sighs. "I bought you a ticket to Kansas City after the last stop on your tour."

"What's in Kansas City?"

For some reason, Suzy laughs like that's the funniest thing she's heard in her life. Once, they'd recorded a song together with Jinyoung and it was so late in the night that they laughed at everything they logically should've cried about. They were nineteen then.

"_Who,_" she corrects. "Park Jinyoung."

**SEEN ON JB "STOPLOSS" M/V**

_Description: JB “STOPLOSS” MV. GOT7 JB’s solo debut is here! Find JB “FACELESS” on iTunes & Apple Music and Spotify. Licensed by JYP Entertainment._  
_600,083,897 views. Published on March 17, 2021. 3,902,563 Comments._

**Simple H**  
BTS wannabe...  
[down votes: 1,132 REPLY]

**JB JB JB**  
At 1:51 when the song slows down and the lyrics go "I let you go / I wish I could stop time so I wouldn't have to lose you / If we cannot go back in time I will hold onto you in this moment forever" is it just me or did anyone think of JB and Jinyoung? Especially with the rumors of their falling out before Jinyoung left the company 😭 I hope Jinyoung listens to this song, wherever he is!  
[up votes: 2,351 REPLY]

**“reply to JB JB JB” >> got74ever**  
i rlly miss them...  
[up votes: 120 REPLY]

_[view more replies]_

Jinyoung used to have this massive crush on Suzy. They never addressed it other than the one time Minyoung had pulled Jaebum aside and told him to tell Jinyoung to stop waiting around their dorms at night. "Honestly, it's a little creepy," she confessed in confidentiality. That was before the nation fell in love with Suzy, and before Minyoung stopped caring about team synergy or whatever.

"She's going to break your heart," Jaebum told him the week after. Suzy had passed by them in the company building wearing a short skirt and dark eyeliner and Jinyoung's eyes followed her down the hallway, reverent.

Jinyoung turned back to him. He looked mildly starstruck, which was typical of anyone seeing Suzy for the first time. When they were younger, Jinyoung had been an idealist and above all a romantic, so much so that the effect Suzy had on him never did fade out even with time. "I think I'm in love with her," he replied, uselessly.

Jaebum thought about how to word it kindly, but became impatient and soon gave up. "But that doesn't mean she loves you." And Jinyoung never did get over her.

A storm delays his flight from New York to Kansas City for three hours. "We're lucky it's not overnight," the businessman who'd sat beside him in the gate says once they start calling seats. Doesn't look like he knows who Jaebum is at all. He smiles and nods.

"What's even out there in Kansas City?" his manager asked when Jaebum told him less than twelve hours ago that he was going. For a trip of healing, he'd justified. His manager had only frowned.

"Nothing." Suzy sent him Jinyoung's address through an encrypted message two nights prior. "Absolutely nothing."

It's raining when he lands, and it's raining when the airport bus drops him off at the stop closest to where Jinyoung lives, a fifteen minute walk away. There's something humbling about being soaked to the skin in the middle of somewhere you've never been, with nothing to anchor you. Maybe Jaebum would've been scared of it years ago when he had a group to lead and schedules to worry about and the general public to please. Now, there's not a lot out there for Jaebum to be afraid of anymore. He feels the rainwater drip down his neck.

At first, Jaebum didn't get why Jinyoung left. Or, if he was going to leave in the first place, why he had settled all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere. After the years of show business had hardened his skin, Jinyoung had walked out manipulative and jaded but still mostly sane. In fact, he was so manipulative that he was predictable, and then this whole Kansas City graduate program became a Jinyoung-branded cliché. Like he was taunting Jaebum to come find him after saying he never wanted to see him again.

It's already past midnight when Jaebum knocks on his door. As if he was waiting, Jinyoung opens it. He doesn't look one bit surprised to see him, nor does he look particularly angry. They had been friends once, after all.

Jinyoung shoots him a sardonic smile. "Is this a drama?" he asks, laughing a bit out of his nose. Even after the years out of the limelight had added a few extra pounds and age to the rest of their group members, Jinyoung appeared unchanged aside from the zit growing on his chin.

"I hate my life," Jaebum admits. "And since you hate me, I figured we should see each other."

Predictably, Jinyoung let him inside with that.

In case you were wondering –

Jaebum and Suzy did have sex. Once, when they were both abroad in the same city, alone, and incredibly miserable. They'd first gotten drunk off the bottle of expensive wine that Suzy had ordered from room service, and when they'd started to sober up she kissed him. He let her.

Jaebum assumed that all those years ago, Jinyoung had slept with Suzy before. He never asked how it was, or what it'd been like, but he guessed it had to be good enough for Jinyoung to fall that head-first in love with her. Other than a few sharp intakes of breath, Suzy was absolutely silent, and even quieter when she came. The entire time, Jaebum thought about hearing Jinyoung cry himself to sleep the last night he waited outside Suzy's dorm, but mentally connecting it with the eyes-screwed-shut dramatic image of him sobbing during a scene in _Dream High 2._

He remembers staring out the floor-length windows afterwards, as if in a dream. They had both put their clothes back on, and the sky was perfectly the color of a peach. The Eiffel Tower loomed in the distance. That was when Jaebum finally realized they were in Paris and that he was very, very drunk.

"I'm getting married," Suzy said suddenly, gently as if to not break his heart, "In two months."

He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. "What the hell, Suzy?" He laughed incredulously, wondering if it was all some sick joke.

Jaebum heard her stand up from the bed and walk over to him. "To Jungsik." He felt the warmth of her, pressed against his shoulder. "I thought it would make you happy."

A mild rush of anger coursed through him. And then as quickly as it had come, it dissipated. "Why the fuck would that make me happy?" he breathed.

Suzy reached up and peeled his hands away from his eyes. In the sudden light, she was too bright to look at but Jaebum could not bring himself to avert his gaze.

"Didn't it always bring you such joy," she continued steadfast, like these were lines in a movie she had been scripted to say, "Holding things close and then letting them run away from you?"

Jinyoung doesn't kick him out after he tells him about the embezzlement. Instead, he lets Jaebum sleep on his couch and offers him one of his old JYP Nation concert shirts to wear. Whether it's out of pity or the miniscule kindness still beating in his heart, Jaebum doesn't know.

"We'll talk about this tomorrow," he says. It's three in the morning by then, and Jaebum finally feels the exhaustion from everything crash down over him. When he finishes using the bathroom, the lights in the living room are turned off and Jinyoung's retreated into his own room. A spring digs into his back as he lays down.

Halfway through the night when Jaebum blinks sleep out of his eyes, Jinyoung's blue-tinted silhouette stands nearby, staring out the kitchen window. A distant boom of thunder comes through the rain outside.

"Don't you think it's funny?" he says as if he senses Jaebum looking at him. "I used to think you were earnest and good and everything I wasn't. And now you're living this lie."

Jaebum stares at the ceiling. He doesn't feel awake, but this doesn't feel like a dream either. "Weren't we always?"

**III. BONNIE, CLYDE, AND CLYDE'S SEMI-AUTONOMOUS SHADOW**

In the winter of 2023, Jinyoung meets with Suzy over his school holiday. Jaebum, who was shooting a music video in Rome at the time, can only imagine the way he looked at her, like he was falling in love all over again.

Over their encrypted emails, Suzy sends him this: _He's got a plan. It could work._

It's strange. No matter how hard Jinyoung had tried to disentangle himself from his idol past, and how much Jaebum hated his life, and how many international fashion magazine covers Suzy posed for, it was the three of them again, this time against the world.

Just like it always should have been.

They start with the letters after _Seollal._ Jinyoung sends them slowly, after organizing the evidence. He doesn't go through Suzy or Jaebum for approval. He doesn't have to. There was an unspoken trust between them after all, built baseless and strong from the understanding of what they had each been through.

Suzy went around the world in circles. Jaebum released his new album to the accolades of critics. They used burner phones and encrypted emails and pretended that their smiles for the cameras were real.

"I heard your song on the radio the other day." Come January of 2024, Jinyoung was stuck in the middle of a snowstorm in Kansas City and he and Jaebum were friends again, or something of the sort. The call before this, Jaebum had hung up on him abruptly, frustrated by the normalcy in his voice despite everything they were doing. Now, he appreciates it. "It's a good one, you know."

It was hard to tell what was real. The further away you got from Jinyoung, the more sense he made. The closer, the less Jaebum could see of the full puzzle. Hearing his soft breathing over the phone, Jaebum feels like if he let his eyes flutter shut, he could be right there beside him.

"Thanks." Purely on impulse, he wants to say that he'd written it for him, just to see what Jinyoung would do. But then again, maybe all of his songs were about Jinyoung, Suzy, the three of them unintentionally, at least a little.

Actually, Jinyoung kissed him once.

It went like this. Jaebum and Jinyoung, you could say at the specific point in time, were friends. GOT7 wasn't going forward, but they weren't going backwards either, stuck in the strange limbo between comfortable success and the idea of something more. The last time the two of them had fought was months ago. Now they existed in man-made equilibrium amidst a stable system.

Someone down the hall was laughing in their room behind a closed door. The dim lamp of the kitchen hummed between them and cast a golden glow onto Jinyoung's face. They had seen each other grow up and cocoon themselves into their respective idol skins, which was odd to think about. The more Jinyoung closed the gap between them, the more Jaebum saw the seventeen-year-old version of him glaring from across the practice room during their first dance lesson, and the more unclear his intentions became.

Their lips touched briefly. Gently, and devastatingly so, like any other movement would disturb the sanctity of this moment and bring upon them the wrath of the apocalypse.

Jaebum pulled back when Jinyoung pressed closer to him. “No,” he said without thinking much about it. His voice came in as though he was hearing it from underwater. The swell of the waves roared, and they stood across from each other, Jaebum with his head bowed and Jinyoung with his gaze surely focused on him.

“I –” All his senses slammed back in suddenly. Jaebum felt the ache of want for everything he knew he shouldn’t have. “I’m sorry.” He looked at Jinyoung.

With the crush of heartbreak written across his face, Jaebum felt like it was the first time he’d seen Jinyoung for who he truly was. And, as if it were too much to bear, he walked away.

It was almost comical, how both of Jaebum's significant romantic encounters had occurred with people he was pointedly not in love with. The only way to get close to him it seemed was through his heart or his dick, of which Jinyoung and Suzy, albeit somewhat inadvertently, had touched both. Someone out there had to be holding out on the laugh track as if not to ruin the ambiance of tragedy.

Around March, right before Jungsik would fold, Jaebum started feeling nervous. It was easy to become paranoid, when the entire world was watching your every move.

In contrast, Suzy wore the spotlight effortlessly, like the expensive diamond earrings Jungsik had gifted her the previous year for her birthday. Jaebum had seen the Instagram post and for some reason it made him feel horribly sick. "Jinyoung's almost got him," she reassures him over the phone. "One more letter and he'll be in our hands."

Jaebum massages his temples. "Don't you think it's taking too damn long?"

"You know we can't rush these things."

He knew she was right. "I just want all this to be over," he concedes quietly. "For Jungsik to go rot in jail and for our lives to fucking move on. This blackmailing thing –” he rubs a palm over his forehead, “I don’t know if we should be doing this, Suzy."

She pauses, as if to think about what to say without hurting his feelings. "You're a good man, Jaebum," she finally tells him.

"You make it sound like an insult," he points out.

Jaebum can almost hear the corners of her mouth pull up into a small, camera-ready smile. He had seen it before in person, like she couldn't quite make up her mind between laughing or being wholly sympathetic.

"But haven't you heard?" Suzy had always been ruthless in this unassuming way. It’s what made her so perfect and impossible to look away from. "Good men never win."

_[He'll meet with us, Jinyoung sends them over email two weeks later. Suzy sits comfortably atop the world in her penthouse apartment in Seoul and Jaebum’s on standby for a late night show appearance in New York City. _

_He pockets his phone and wears a loose-fitting smile when they call him on stage, waving at the audience for good measure. He’s got a show to put on, after all.]_

They pick Jinyoung up from the airport in June after he's turned in his thesis. By then, cicada season's begun. Jaebum can hear their cries from the one rolled down backseat window as they leave the city and head closer to where they'll meet Jungsik in his and Suzy's vacation home in the mountains. Otherwise, the drive is purposefully quiet. It's almost like the three of them are preparing for their roles, except there are no cameras nearby to frame the moment.

It's a little crazy, what they're doing. Jaebum's hands hurt an hour in from clutching the steering wheel so tightly.

They stay the night at a cheap hotel. Jinyoung pays with a wad of Suzy's cash as she and Jaebum watch from the car. While she takes a bath, Jaebum and Jinyoung sit in a thick sort of silence on opposite sides of the room.

"I didn't know you smoked again," Jinyoung comments when he finally looks up from his phone. Other than the short hello's they had exchanged at the airport, it's the first they've spoken to each other face-to-face since the time Jaebum spent in Kansas City.

Jaebum taps the butt of his cigarette against the windowsill. The glowing embers fall into the darkness like shooting stars before being swallowed whole into the belly of the night. The two of them used to be at such odds all the time, but now he couldn't really recall why. It made him irrationally angry on top of everything else.

"Five years ago," he begins aimlessly in response, "Would you ever think I would do this?"

The bedside lamp flickers in Jinyoung's eyes. For a second, Jaebum thinks Jinyoung might cross the space between them and kiss him like he had all those years ago. He doesn't.

"Five years ago, I hated you." The corners of his mouth curl up into an unwitting smile. "But look where we are now."

That was the thing. Jinyoung had always kindled a firestorm within him. Jaebum remembers it now, feels it swirling in his gut. That was why they had always been so dangerous together. There was no way of knowing when the wildfire would spark and zero everything around it.

But when Suzy walks out of the shower with her hair dripping down her back, Jaebum knows that Jinyoung will look at her like he did when he was seventeen, stealing lovestruck glances that she never returned. What did that make him, then?

"You're right," he agrees just as Suzy turns the water off.

**SEEN ON THE ELLEN SHOW**

_Recorded in May, popstar **Jaebum Im** sits across from talk show host **Ellen DeGeneres** to promote his new single, "Roads." A physical copy of the CD is propped up between them on the table. Jaebum's translator sits beside him, trying her best to look invisible._

**ELLEN:** So I listened to your last album, "Faceless." Great album by the way – we've even actually got a copy of it here. _[The screen behind them shows a large picture of Ellen posing with it to the whooping cheers of the audience. Jaebum smiles politely in response.]_ I noticed a lot of your songs are about love. Now in your career as an artist, have you dated a lot of people? Because surely, you have to get your inspiration from somewhere.

**JAEBUM:** _[He turns toward his translator. After she finishes explaining, in Korean –]_ Actually, the company has strict rules about dating. Not that we don't try to bend them, but... _[When the translator gets here, the audience ooh's. Jaebum grins the way Suzy told him to.]_ So when I write songs, I draw from those few experiences of love.

**ELLEN:** And have you been lucky in love?

**JAEBUM:** _[He takes a moment to think about it, seriously. A little vulnerability made someone you saw on television more genuine, even if they never truly gave up an inch. He had learned that much from Suzy and Jinyoung.]_ Honestly, I'm not sure if they ever loved me back.

The sun's already up by the time they set out early the next morning.

Suzy had hidden a handgun and bullets in her luggage. The look she gives Jaebum when he yells at her for it is oddly reminiscent of that one movie of hers he'd seen all those years ago, with Jinyoung in the supporting role. They seemed untouchable in it, projected on such a large screen.

"You guys are fucking crazy," he breathes when Jinyoung takes the gun out of his hands. Jaebum only realizes he has no idea where they've put it by the time they're driving up the winding mountain road.

Far away from everything, time stretches languid and surreal around them. Jinyoung walks out to the intercom at the front gate. Jaebum looks at Suzy, who stares at the calm greenery out the window. Things happened, and there was a delay to calibrate all the possible futures as a consequence of them.

The trees on the mountainside sway in the gentle summer breeze. Jungsik cowers from them when he and Suzy get out of the car after Jinyoung. It makes Jaebum mad suddenly, seeing the man who had made him suffer so powerless.

"Sit down," he spits out. Jungsik does, the nervous smile slipping off his face. Jinyoung leans against the desk he'd abandoned and Suzy sits on the couch looking out the window, so still that Jaebum doesn't even know if she's breathing.

Jungsik lets Jaebum yell at him. "This is how it goes," Suzy comes in at one point, reanimating from where she'd been frozen. “We’ve done the math for how much you owe us. We’re not asking for anything more than that. The sooner you agree, the sooner we’re done here.”

Jungsik's eyes pass from Jaebum to her. “I’ll get it back in court, you know." He does not look at Jinyoung until Suzy walks over to him and holds that gun Jaebum pried out of her hands just hours ago between her manicured fingers.

Reality distorts then into strange, uneven segments of existence. Suzy opens her mouth, but Jaebum cannot hear the words she speaks over the cicadas chirping outside. A look of fear crosses Jungsik's face. And Jinyoung just watches them, wordlessly.

"You lied to me," Suzy's voice finally cuts in again. “You told me you loved me. I fell in love with a lie.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Jungsik pleads. “I loved you. It was all real, Suzy, you have to believe me.”

Suzy sinks her teeth in. Jaebum wonders if she ever really loved him. The only time he had seen them together was at their wedding, three years ago. Was she even capable of loving anything? “You took everything I had to my name and planned to scrape up the rest in the divorce. But the money doesn’t even matter, you know? Not really. Because you robbed me of everything else, too.”

Finally, Jungsik desperately looks to Jinyoung. Jinyoung only smiles. That's how his character had died in Suzy's movie, open eyes reflecting an impossibly blue sky. It had sent chills down Jaebum's spine even in its artificiality, like it does now.

Suzy looks at Jinyoung. Jinyoung looks at Suzy. That's when Jaebum understands.

They had both come here with a role to play and never thought to show him the script. He feels the ache most acutely then, of want for everything he knew he shouldn’t have. Time, sticky, pools like honey around his feet.

Isolated images. Suzy hands Jinyoung the gun. Jinyoung: deep breath. Steadies his aim.

Two bullets. And then Choi Jungsik falls over, dead.

"You've always been soft on us," Suzy pointed out to him the night before. Her hair smelled of cheap hotel shampoo. Jinyoung had been asleep and Jaebum had been flooded with a sudden tide of guilt for what they were about to do.

"I know." Jaebum started to think he shouldn't have let himself be. But it was too late.

Between the three of them, Jaebum had never been the actor. That made him –

"Too honest," his instructor told him once, when he was preparing for the last drama appearance the company would ever book for him. That was over ten years ago now. "You have to lie a little, in order to become someone else."

Before Suzy became an Academy Award winning actress or Choi Jungsik's wife, she had been the darling of the industry. The nation's first love. People used to write articles about Jinyoung like that too, if to a lesser extent. The two of them wore their harmlessness and hid their carnivorous teeth behind close-lipped smiles for the camera.

The scene is almost too perfect. The blood staining the cream-colored couch, and Jungsik's body lifeless beside it, as if it had been staged there right along with the rest of the furniture. There's an unreadable expression on Jinyoung's face as Suzy cleans his fingerprints off the gun.

"How did you know how to do that?" Jaebum asks once he finds his tongue again.

She smiles at him, beautiful and apologetic. "From my movie."

They stop by a lake on their way down from the house. Jaebum stares out onto the water for what feels like forever, now that time has caught up with them.

Choi Jungsik had made his life miserable. But they weren't supposed to kill him.

Or were they?

That evening, Jinyoung throws up in the bathroom. "It's okay," Suzy repeats as she holds him against her chest. Eventually, he stops heaving. Jaebum watches them from a distance, silent and angry.

He was in love with them, you see. Sometimes, he hated himself for it.

Other times, he helps Jinyoung to bed and takes his shoes off. He and Suzy climb into the bed with Jinyoung between them, and for the longest time Jaebum stares at the ceiling, listening to the rhythm of their breathing.

They were bound together now. Irreversibly, the way people with shared secrets had to be.

Jaebum didn't quite know how he felt about it. In the midst of thinking, he fell asleep. 

**SEEN IN END CREDITS**

_An otherwise blank screen. Slowly, the words **Can you tell me what happened on June 4th, 2024?** fade in. After a moment, the entire image fades to black._

CUT TO **JINYOUNG:** Something incredibly awful. _[He smiles sadly, before straightening in his seat. Even years out of the limelight, his face still holds the boyish charm of an imagined first love, projected on television screens across the nation.]_ Yet, that grief was magical in a way. It gave me back some of my closest friends. _[He pauses. Covers his mouth with a hand, thoughtful.]_ I wish it didn't have to come to that. A funeral to find our way back to each other again. _[His words are earnest. Behind the hand lies a twisted smile.]_

CUT TO **SUZY:** A tragedy. _[She presses her lips together in the illusion of mourning.]_ My husband was murdered, you see. _[But she does not cry for him.]_

CUT TO **JAEBUM:** _[He's looking into the camera for once. Quiet. There is something so painful and heavy about his gaze, like there are too many words he cannot find the language to speak them in. It leaves you uncomfortable. Cold. You cannot look away.]_

_**Jaebum's** face fades. The phrase **FIN** appears in its place. Even so, the afterimage of his eyes imprints itself onto the background. _

_You don't know what you just witnessed. But the crowd surges up like a sea surrounding you and gives it a standing ovation._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to lovely Naladot for giving me the chance to remix this fic! Also, big thank you to mod for organizing ficmix and to [redacted] [EDIT 9/23: ao3 user hachimitsuto] for letting me cheat sheet off your Jay Bee meta and the beta. IOU!!!


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